Old Telluride: Lone Tree Cemetery's founding; the original Ice House

Original Questions: What year was Lone Tree Cemetery founded and where did Tom McMahon's ice originally come from?
Hi Nicola,
I've had some luck with the research you asked about. As for the Cemetery, I can tell you that Edwin Andrus died, according to the cemetery survey, in 1885, aged 1 year, 7 months and 11 days. Like you said, Edwin was the first body to be entombed following his father's gift of land for the cemetery. I might add, though, that the Undertaker happened to be in here this morning, and he said the cemetery did not become official until sometime in the 1950's or 60's, when the Cemetery Board was created. If you needed more info on that, I'd be happy to look into it.

As for Tom McMahon and the Ice House…In the book Historic Telluride in Rare Photographs, (Buys, Christian J. Western Reflections: Ouray, 1998.) they cite Tom McMahon's ice coming from ice ponds "east of town." There's a great picture of two young men standing on the skids used to move the ice, over the pond, but the pond itself is not frozen. I've tried to find a more detailed description of where the ponds were, but because the river was rerouted, this is hard to do. The best I can estimate is that his ponds were around the current Beaver Pond, on the side closer to the post office. Conversations at 9000 feet (Pera, Davine. Western Reflections: Ouray, 2000) cited similar information, quoting Mary Boyer who said, "We used to ice-skate down at old Tom McMahon's icehouse down there through that swamp part when it got good enough. But mostly it was that lake across the tracks there…" (p221). Since the railroad "tracks" paralleled the river, I think it's then safe to say that this icehouse was on the town side of the river/tracks.

Please let me know if you'd like me to look into any more information for you or if you need more detail or copies of anything in our collection.

Jenine